The chief executive officer of Banco Santander, Héctor Grisi, has sent a message of calm about the company’s performance on the stock market, after stringing together a decline of more than 6% so far this week. He explained this behavior by a "negative bias" from investors and reiterated that the group’s fundamentals remain intact, as does its forecast to close the fiscal year with a net profit above 15,000 million euros.
"I think the markets today have a more negative than positive focus," the executive said at the press conference following the presentation of the third-quarter 2026 results, downplaying the correction on the stock market and emphasizing the strength of the business.
Since last Friday’s close, when the share ended at 11.51 euros, the bank’s shares, chaired by Ana Botín, have accumulated a fall of nearly 6.4% on the Spanish stock exchange, to 10.78 euros at which they were trading at 13:00 hours.
In this context, Grisi has insisted that the bank will meet the financial targets communicated to the market. "We are going to be, as we always said, above 15,000 million in profit this year and we are going to have capital above 12.8% of CET1, above what we had indicated and within the range we had talked about," he stated.
The top executive also reiterated the priority of creating value for the shareholder and maintaining strict cost discipline, underscoring that the management team will remain on the sidelines of short-term swings to focus on executing the strategic plan.
"We are very calm with what we are doing and that is the goal on which we have to focus. Then the market will differentiate things as it sees fit, but we are focused on what we do," he concluded.
Boost in business in Spain and international stability
In parallel, Grisi has highlighted the dynamism of activity in Spain, supported by the good tone of the national economy, for which Santander forecasts an advance of 2.6% this year.
"We see activity in Spain as very positive. It is coming with very solid credit growth, growth in all products and very good dynamics in customer acquisition. We have been growing in a solid way," he noted.
Regarding the rest of the markets in which the group operates, the executive has ruled out that electoral processes or the macroeconomic environment in countries such as Brazil pose a threat to the set objectives. "We are in line with what we expect and we do not see any situation in any of the countries in which we operate that could lead us to not achieve the result," he has said.
Neobank competition and commitment to the mixed model
Santander's number two has recalled that the financial sector faces "a very competitive market," both in savings products and in financing.
In this sense, he has emphasized that purely digital banks are showing "aggressive" behavior in all of the group's key geographies. "If you look at markets like Brazil and Mexico, neobanks are taking a good part of the market. They are more than anything focused on the individual side and that is where they are attacking the market," he has admitted.
Despite the advance of these new entities, the chief executive has underlined that neobanks "do not have the quantity and range of products that a bank like Santander has".
"We are focused on combining much more competitive digital solutions and at the level of the best in the market with our physical infrastructure, and that makes us, truly, quite a winning solution," Grisi has concluded.